


In The Garden

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Secret Garden Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:38:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Ben returns from war and Rey finds him where they've always found one another: in the garden.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 107
Kudos: 406
Collections: A Rey by Any Other Name





	In The Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ishie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/gifts).



> inspired by the moodboard that ishie made for the event even if...i took a lovely spring moodboard and somehow managed to set the dang thing in winter.

The earth muffled Rey’s footsteps as she ran across the moors, her heart pounding in her chest. _I saw him—young Master Solo that is, Major Solo I think they said his rank was—he was at the station and got in a carriage to bring him back up to the manor._

_He’s back. He’s back. He’s back._

It was cold outside, and Rey’s coat was old and worn but her pulse kept her warm. There were flurries of snow in the air too, but that wasn’t surprising at this time of year. She’d first met him when it was still snowing out, had helped him dig through the earth to find the bulbs. They’d torn out weeds together. 

The manor house bloomed out of the hills ahead the way it always had, tall and lonely and austere, and unlike anything Rey had ever known, orphaned shepherd’s daughter that she was. _How like Master Ben,_ she’d thought when she was a girl whenever she’d gone to the manor. Little had either of them known that he was far more like the garden.

The garden had belonged to Padme Skywalker. When she died unexpectedly, her husband, Ben’s grandfather, locked it up and buried the key and said that no one was to go inside it. Ben had grown up just about as far from the manor house as his mother could take him, but when his parents died—also unexpectedly—he had arrived at Varykino to find a grandfather who almost couldn’t bear to look at him, so much did he resemble his grandmother.

She reached the front door of the manor house and opened it, practically running into Mrs. Kanata as she did so. The old woman gave her a knowing look. “He’s not here,” she said. 

“But they said he was back in town,” Rey blurted out.

The housekeeper was older than Rey knew how to understand and the wrinkles in her face flowed like rivers around that knowing smile. “Where do you _think_ he went?” she asked and pushed Rey towards the door.

Because of course. Of _course_. 

Ben had gone to the garden.

 _I tended it,_ she thought to him as though he could hear her all the way from within its walls. _I took care of it while you were gone, Ben. I took care of our garden._

 _Their_ garden because Rey helped find the right bulbs, helped him save the roses that had once been Padme Skywalker’s, helped him fix a fountain that by rights should never have been there at all when Ben had—in his boyhood loneliness—found the key, found the door, and unlocked the garden. She’d helped him fix the swing whose ropes had been broken from years locked away. 

But they’d kept it alive together and Ben went to see it immediately upon returning home. 

Gravel scattered under her feet as she ran through familiar walled paths, passing the vegetable gardens, passing the herb gardens until she found a heavily ivied wall—so thick that even with leaves dead for winter, you had to know where the gate was. 

And then she was through the gate and stopping short because there was no sign of Ben anywhere. Had she missed him?

But no—no, he was crouched down behind the fountain, examining a bit of bush that she’d planted in the autumn of 1914 after he’d gone off.

“Ben,” she said and he stood up and—

Had he always been this tall? Surely he had to have been and yet it took her breath away to see him standing there, tall and broad and—

“What happened to your face?” she blurted out as she approached him, her eyes on the scar that slashed a trail from his eye to his chin. But he didn’t seem to have heard her. His eyes were on her face and his expression was exactly the same as when they’d first found green ten years before. 

And a moment later he was pulling her into his arms, pressing his face to hers, his breath hot across her lips and time seemed to stop. It wasn’t winter; there hadn’t been a war. They were standing in their garden, the one they’d saved, the one they’d grown together in secret, and then together not in secret when Ben’s grandfather had found out and had been unexpectedly delighted, and Ben was kissing her as no one had ever kissed her before. 

She kissed him back greedily, clinging to the front of his coat, clinging to him because he was alive, and here, he hadn’t died in the trenches, in the mud. He was home and their garden was going to bloom again, and bloom again and his breath was not as fragrant as the roses and yet was the most wonderful thing she’d ever tasted on her tongue. 

They might have kissed for hours. Perhaps even for days. When his lips did at last relinquish hers, he rested his forehead against hers and they stood there quietly, just breathing. The wind blew and rustled the leafless branches all around them. Snow continued to flutter down from the heavens and landed on the scarf, where it melted from the heat of him. 

“Marry me,” he whispered to her.

“What?” Rey asked sharply.

“Marry me, Rey. Please.” His forehead had not moved from hers, and she didn’t pull away from him. Standing in Ben’s arms was as right as dirt under her fingernails, as natural as lambs in spring. 

“But I’m—” she fumbled for words. She shouldn’t have to say them. Surely he knew how crazy he must sound. Lords of great manor houses didn’t marry country girls with no family to their name.

“You’re all I could think about in France,” he told her and he was pulling away but only so he could look at her fiercely. “When the trenches flooded, all I could think was that somehow you’d make them bloom, that you were here, and safe, and that the second I got back to you, I’d kiss you and tell you that I’ve loved you from the second we first saw the rosebuds.” He paused and the next word escaped his lips as though his very life depended on it. “Please.”

“This is mad,” she whispered. She was still clinging to his coat. She didn’t want to let him go. “Ben, this is—”

“War is mad,” he replied and his voice was hard. “Destruction and death and chaos. I much prefer a garden. I don’t care what they say. They can say whatever they like. The only reason I’m still alive was I promised myself I’d come back to you the first day I saw most of my brothers in arms mowed down by German guns.”

Rey swallowed. Ben had written her. His letters had always been long, and his handwriting perfect, but he’d always been very careful not to speak of death or injury. She reached a hand up and brushed the scar on his chek. It was rough where the rest of his face was soft.

“How did this happen?” she asked. 

“I saw death flashing before my eyes,” he whispered, his voice trembling, his _breath_ trembling against her hand. “And all I could think of was you.”

And she surged up to kiss him again. _Alive_ , she thought as her heart pounded in her chest and Ben’s arms tightened around her once more. _He’s alive he’s here we’re in the garden._

“Yes,” she breathed into his lips. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

And he was lifting her up off the ground, swinging her around and it would have been beautiful, if disconcerting, she was sure—except that he lost his balance and they were both tumbling to the ground, clinging to one another and laughing as they had done since they were children. “I’m sorry,” Ben managed but she didn’t even have a moment to respond before he was kissing her again.

And when he kissed her, it was springtime, and yellow summer sunshine, and the pocket watch he’d gotten from his grandfather. It was Padme’s pink and white and red and yellow roses all around them, blooming and blooming and blooming every year.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! you can find me [here](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter) when i'm not hiding from social media!


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